Brexit Food Price Scare-Mongering!

Here we go again, more doom, gloom and scaremongering from the Remainers – this time led by the House of Lords!

Before I go on, yes I am still using the word 'Brexit' and not the 'Full Withdrawal of the UK from the EU' or 'FWUKEU', because all the interweb search engines are optimised for the word 'Brexit'.

Now back to Remoaner scare-mongering.

What a surprise, the Lords EU Environment Committee has said that food bills could rise sharply after Brexit if no deal is reached with the bloc.

"In the event of the UK leaving the EU in March 2019 without any deal, it said, the UK could face an average 22% tariff on food imports from the Continent."Reports the BBC.

"While this would not equate to a 22% increase in food prices for consumers, there can be no doubt that prices paid at the checkout would rise.

"To counteract this, the government could cut tariffs on all food imports, EU and non-EU, but this would pose a serious risk of undermining UK food producers who could not compete on price."

Of course the obvious question would be, why would our own government slap a 22% tariff on food imports? What is there to gain by doing this? This is just complete nonsense! Post-Brexit the UK can set its own tariff rates and only apply them where needed to protect UK producers.

And as Jacob Rees-Mogg said on the BBC2 Daily Politics programme about this today, firstly he said food prices will come down when we leave the EU, and then he went on to say:

"The House of Lords has missed one very important thing, and that is that if you are in negotiation for a free trade agreement you can maintain your existing standards for ten years under WTO rules.

"So we have ten years from the point at which we leave the European Union to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU which would mean we could continue with zero tariffs. So this is something the report just ignores, it's unaware of."

And he went on to say that basically the lords did not know what they were on about.

Either that or that Lords committee is wilfully trying to mislead people – I'll leave it to you to decide which.

Appearing on the programme with Jacob Rees-Mogg was the English historian Lord Hennessey, and he said that much of the anti-Brexit feeling amongst the peers stemmed from alarm that their life's work would be destroyed. People approaching their twilight years, he said, could see their careers being shredded.

People have died and been maimed for this country, with families torn apart in the process, so the shredded careers of a few people who have been well-remunerated over the years, is a price I think we can all accept.

Now onto another Tory MP. As far as John Redwood is concerned, the UK always asks the EU for far too little and then always settles for even less.

Former senior civil servants now sat in the House of Lords have a view that, because the EU is larger than the UK, we have to ask the EU what they are going to do then claim it as our own, says John Redwood in his Blog.

"I have never understood why so many senior officials think we need to give in each time to the EU. At every Council I attended there was remorseless pressure to reach an agreement about some new law – always an extension of EU power – when there was no need for a new law and when many interested parties were against it or wanted it changed or watered down." He writes.

And David cameron fell for this approach in his failed, attempted EU reform tour, prior to the EU referendum says Redwood. And he goes on to say:

"So what did he do wrong? He asked for too little and settled for even less. The method appeared to be to tour the main capitals of the EU and ask what they might offer us. The answer was a uniform not much. He then asked for not much, and was promptly told that was too much!"

The warning Redwood gives, is that our ministers and their advisers must not follow this well-trod path to submission.

The trouble though, is that most of the advisers – and the establishment in the form of the Houses of Commons and Lords want our negotiators to tread just that path to failure!

All you have to do is look at the recent manoeuvring in the House of Lords to recognise that.

Do you remember being told by remainers that Brexit would lead to the virtual shutting down of our universities once all those clever overseas people decided to either get their education or to teach in the EU?

"In our larger and more international universities — including Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, the LSE, Queen Mary, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester — the trend is even more marked: the number arriving last year was nearly two-thirds higher than the number leaving."

The author points to many things that are wrong with the UK system from fees to structure to academic career shortcomings to funding for research, none of them Brexit driven.

And he says that any University personnel problem we have is not caused by a 'Brexodus', but by the unattractive academic careers on offer. And UK academic careers are just less unattractive than elsewhere at present.

But overall our academic institutions still rule the roost – the real question he asks is for how much longer?

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